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Disaster
(in Germany)
May 4:
Oberhausen Film Festival
Kinomuseum program
May 11, 7:30
Arsenal Cinema
Berlin
D I S A S T E R
Sherry Millner's situationist film of the 70s--newly restored
In 1975/76, while living in San Francisco, Sherry Millner produced the first
avowedly situationist film made in the U.S. Disaster, a two-screen, 30 minute,
b & w Super-8 film, scripted and shot by Millner and Ernest Larsen, won a major
prize at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. At the time, Hollywood was producing
all-star blockbusters that depicted overwhelming disaster--like The Towering
Inferno and Earthquake. Millner felt that the films exploited audiences’ ardent
if repressed desire to see the present day metropolis torn to bits. Buried
under such spectacular ruins was the real arena of disaster--so difficult to
face--everyday life. The quotidian--that panoply of humiliations (beginning
with the alarm clock’s imperious summons each morning), routines, disciplines,
distractions, and fantasies which sooner or later reconcile all of us to a
regimen of delayed gratification. This was the site that needed to be
excavated. Millner decided to take back the cinema for her own ‘cheapskate’
cinemascope disaster epic and to use two screens to animate the gulf that
yawned between the two sites of catastrophe.
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53rd International Short Film Festival Oberhausen
3 - 8 May 2007 Oberhausen, Germany http://www.kurzfilmtage.de
Kinomuseum, a series of cinema programmes exploring the relationship between
cinema and the museum includes works by Marina Abramovic, Bernadette
Corporation, Gregg Bordowitz, Pablo Bronstein, David Dempewolf, Georges Franju,
Megan Fraser, Hermine Freed, Dan Graham, Emma Hart, Judith Hopf, Joan Jonas,
William E. Jones, Amar Kanwar, David Lamelas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Sherry Millner with Ernie Larsen, Deimantas Narkevicius, Seth Price, Alain
Resnais, Michael Robinson, David Thorne and Julia Meltzer, Sarah Vanagt, Emily
Wardill, Lawrence Weiner, Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa and Ina Wudtke amongst many
others.
Curated by Ian White (Adjunct Film Curator, Whitechapel Gallery, London),
Kinomuseum proposes an alternative to the conservative separation between the
museum and the auditorium, imagining a new kind of museum rising from the
foundations of an artists’ cinema. A museum that is transitory and poses the
auditorium as a vital site of exchange and experience. A museum that enables
the exhibition of works where meaning is contingent upon the principles and
operating systems of the cinema.
Five programs will examine artists’ representations of the museum and its
associated structures and ideas. Five guest curators have been invited, through
selecting one film program each, to construct a unique imaginary museum in the
cinema itself: Achim Borchardt-Hume (curator, Tate, London; proposes
“Zeichentrick,” a museum on the line between film and painting), AA Bronson
(artist, New York; proposes “Sex Work: The museum as brothel, art house as porn
house”), Mary Kelly (artist, Los Angeles; proposes “Fallout”, a museum of
disaster), Mark Leckey (artist, London; personally presents a specially
conceived collection) and Emily Pethick (director, Casco Projects, Utrecht;
proposes a “Hall of Mirrors”).
Kinomuseum is accompanied by two discussions: on May 7, Chrissie Iles,
Alexander Horwath, Marysia Lewandowska, Philippe-Alain Michaud and Vanessa Joan
Mueller will discuss the question “Does the museum fail?“. On May 6, Matt
Hanson, Oskar Negt, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Gertjan Zuilhof will talk about
“Privatisation of film experience”, moderated by Olaf Moeller.
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